This started as a tiny reply to DecepticonCobra in the Halo 5 Enemies thread and… got out of hand. Figured it’d be more useful as its own topic.
We need more distinction between Promethean/Forerunner weapons and their obvious counterparts in Covie/UNSC arms as far as form/function/role goes. They had unique aspects, but were very clearly a parallel to other weapons without much to distinguish them as unique in my opinion.
The issue with adding a whole third tech line in Halo is the same issue StarCraft would have adding a fourth playable race: When what you originally had filled about every role perfectly with minimal overlap… how the hell do you add more without creating ultra-specialized equipment or rehashing the previous roster? This is my break-down of the issue I’ve got here:
UNSC Equipment is primarily clip-based with a few battery-op weapons in special roles. Almost exclusively ballistic in nature. Good at sustaining steady fire on targets, accuracy-based for the most part, but average to subpar when pitted against energy shields. Highly effective against vehicles and unshielded personnel alike with a wide array of high-impact and high-explosive to choose from. Weapons are generally made to be well-rounded used by a solitary soldier.
Form is generally boxy with rounded corners in gray or green hues. They’re a mashup of your typical ‘space gun’ fare with modern military design aspects.
This is where ‘futuristic but familiar’ belongs.
Covenant Equipment is largely battery-powered with overheat as a way to force similar firing pauses to reloading a UNSC weapon, with a small handful of clip-based projectile weapons of… sometimes uncertain method of function. Weapons typically fire superheated plasma or radioactive projectiles. Overheat makes sustained fire on targets more problematic and non-serviceable batteries disallow scavenging of additional ammuntion without replacing the unit. Weapons are mostly ineffectual at engaging vehicles, but excel at stripping shielding. With a very small amount of exceptions, Covenant weapons focus on getting as much pain ‘somewhere over there’ as possible and are designed to be fired by large amounts of users simultaneously.
Design for Covenant weapons uses a lot of color and curvature, feeling very strange and organic for weaponry and flips between high-tech versions of the archaic to almost high-fantasy levels of oddity.
This is where ‘What the hell is that and how does it work?’ used to find its exclusive home.
Now, with those two things… where does a third fit?
Forerunner Equipment uses HardLight-based technology that behaves very similarly to UNSC bullets with a few quirks such as the ability to disintegrate targets and the Scattershot’s bizarre ricocheting fletchette rounds. Weapons tend to be either highly overpowered per bullet or almost useless with seemingly little mid-ground. Knowing these weapons were not designed as anti-personnel solutions but anti-Flood justifies some of this from a lore standpoint, but not from a multiplayer gameplay position. Forerunner arms appear to be ‘all or nothing’ and have somewhat arbitrary sub-aspects that serve relatively no purpose or even detract from use in multiplayer, such as the Scattershot’s seemingly ‘dice-roll’ kill range or the Boltshot’s entire primary firing mode’s pathetic DPS.
Stylistically, Forerunner weapons are alien, but familiar enough. They’re all the familiar silver-gray we associate with the Forerunner race with splashes of viciously glowing orange as accent, unique in the way they seem to disregard known conventions of construction and physics. They sit as odd silver curiosities amidst the older roster of Covenant and UNSC firearms, providing little unique function themselves, but rather seeming to offer intriguing parodies of the abilities of both.
I eagerly await seeing more than just the LightRifle in Halo 5, but I worry. The LR seems to have found its home as a powerful mid-long range rifle with a low fire rate and scarce ammunition. I hope the others find the same sense of identity of role. I’ve laid out my problem with them, but I have so far relatively little in way of solution. What does everyone think could be done to give Forerunner weapons their own ‘Forerunnery’ feel?
